How Can the Pontic Empire Survive?

If I can guess this right, the original Azeris must have lived there. The Iranic Azeris, not the modern day Turkicized Azeris.

The name Azerbaijan is essentially Atropatene (they both mean the land of Fire in reference to Zoroastrianism) in the same way Etruria (Etruscan) became Tuscany (Tuscan).

The old Azeris I am not terribly sure, though Media Atropatene was a rather powerful Ancient state, they were rather independent tributaries of the Parthian Empire at the time. Ecbatana, the capital, was a huge Ziggarut City with remarkable architecture. One level was red, one white another gold. It was the Capital of the Median Empire from Herodotus and held the same amount of prestige in the region that Babylon held in Mesopotamia.

One other thing.

Mithridates was considered both Hellenic and Persian as he claimed (and was 100% true) that he was descended from both Persian Shahanshah Darius and Alexander the Great due to his family marrying into and taking part in the Diadochi Wars (His great great Grandad was besties with Demtrios Poliorcetes who then saved his life). He was constantly acting like a benevolent Hellenic Basilius, before he began the First Mithridatic War he sacrificed a solid Gold Chariot pulled by 4 white horses to Poseidon by driving it over a cliff and made donations to the Temple of Delphi hoping to sell himself as a Hellenic King.

After the failure of the First war Mithridates changed tact and began acting more Persian as he considered the Greeks fickle and quick to change sides. He began to celebrate mountaintop Bonfires to Zeus Stratios (Hellenic name for Ahura Mazda) a very Persian Zoroastrian ritual.
 
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katchen

Banned
Someone could find a real treasure if they could find that solid gold chariot. It would be a wonderful national treasure for Turkey or Georgia. I presume if the chariot was sacrificed to Poseidon, the cliff goes into the Black Sea. Maybe Clive Cussler will write one of his novels about it.:D.
If Azerbaijan means "land of fire:", it may also be a reference to the numerous flammable oil seeps that are to be found along the Caspian and Caucasus from Baku to Machkachkala and Grozny. Oil that was easily lit into "eternal flames" as well as made into "Greek fire" and distilled into numerous poisons.
 
Someone could find a real treasure if they could find that solid gold chariot.

Theres more than that!

Paranoid to the last Mithridates had hundreds of gold stashes placed in caves and dry wells throughout his Kingdom so he could have a ready supply of money to buy mercenaries in case his capital fell and he was cut off from cities (which did happen, he raided a few of his stashes after Lucullus was recalled to Rome). He was super prepared for all eventualities, which is why I have a great respect for his incredible competence.

Some believe there are still undiscovered treasure troves somewhere in the hills of Pontus and Cappodacia.

Essentially he was an ancient Prepper only with better reason to be paranoid.
 
I always admired Mithrdates' preparedness for just about any situation. As you mentioned, he had the stashes so he can have money to hire mercenaries in a time of crisis, and he also of course took small doses of poison. Even his massacre of the Italians in Asia shows a keen sense of being prepared-it binded the people to him for they knew Rome would never forgive that crime, and thus would be less likely to surrender.
 
I truly believe the crowing moment of his undeniable awesomeness was poisoning an entire cohort of Roman soldiers that were sent to capture him after his disaterous battle with Pompey.

He scattered gold across the road and left two pack animals one with the gold and one with satchels filled with local honeycomb. The Romans stopped and started to divide the loot and ate the honey. It was, however, made by local bees, who were notorious for producing highly noxious honey made from poisonous flowers (they still do). The Romans went blind or were crippled by vomiting and their bowels turning to liquid. Then a few hundred local tribesmen waiting in the trees dropped down and slaughtered them all as per their orders.

Then he disappeared across the Caucusus during winter with a dozen followers. He vanished into the steppes after the frosbite reacted badly with the high levels of arsenic in his blood, due to the habitual poison ingesting regime, causing him to loose an eye and half his face melting off.
After a year Pompey gave him up for dead, then at the head of a Sarmatian horde of some 10s of thousands of Sarmatian tribesmen he returned and swept over Cimmeria conquering it from his son.
 

katchen

Banned
Unfortunately, Mithradetes had no idea that not all poisons are of the kind that it is possible for the body to build up a tolerance to. Arsenic simply replaces phosphorus in cellular reactions only not very well, totally disrupting cellular metabolism. Some botanists attempted to find plants that had adapted to replace phosphate with arsenic by looking at algae from high arsenic Mono Lake--they were unable to do it.
 
Mithridates was rather obsessed with poisons, but his incredible ability to make antidotes to them led to all poison cure-alls (whether they were snake oil or not) to be known as Mithridatim for over a thousand years.
He was also one of THE greatest pharmacologists of his age. He stopped himself and several soldiers bleeding to death from nasty thigh wounds endemic to cavalry men, by using non lethal snake venom to constrict the blood vessels around the wounds and then sewed them up. That was why he also had a group of trained snake charmers follow him about to keep his reptilian collection in order.
His extensive research kept him very knowledgeable about poisons, how they work, how they can be cured and kept the crime rate of Pontus low. Criminals were his favourite guinea pigs...

Had Pompey not murdered his captured secretary and burned all of Mithridates notes on his pharmeceutical research in an act of callous ignorance (Pompey only kept Mithridates recipe for a potion of longevity that was quite obviously a dud) we might have had an earlier effective understanding and use of medicine. Due to old Mithridates being paranoid he only kept one copy of his notes unfortunately.
 
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Mithridates was rather obsessed with poisons, but his incredible ability to make antidotes to them led to all poison cure-alls (whether they were snake oil or not) to be known as Mithridatim for over a thousand years.
He was also one of THE greatest pharmacologists of his age. He stopped himself and several soldiers bleeding to death from nasty thigh wounds endemic to cavalry men, by using non lethal snake venom to constrict the blood vessels around the wounds and then sewed them up. That was why he also had a group of trained snake charmers follow him about to keep his reptilian collection in order.
His extensive research kept him very knowledgeable about poisons, how they work, how they can be cured and kept the crime rate of Pontus low. Criminals were his favourite guinea pigs...

Had Pompey not murdered his captured secretary and burned all of Mithridates notes on his pharmeceutical research in an act of callous ignorance (Pompey only kept Mithridates recipe for a potion of longevity that was quite obviously a dud) we might have had an earlier effective understanding and use of medicine. Due to old Mithridates being paranoid he only kept one copy of his notes unfortunately.

Dang, so would a surviving Pontic Empire actually be a good leader in scientific research on medicine? And using criminals as guinea pigs for such medicinal experiments? I do hope that Mithridates didn't go into the deep end of the sanity pool like Shiro Ishii and Unit 731.
 
Dont get me wrong, while he was an extensive researcher into medical pharmacology and toxicology he also believed in gemology, the inherint power of various jewels to grant special abilities depending on their type. He had a collection of rings that would make the Mandarin look reserved. He had frequent discourse with a leading Jewish expert on Gemology who lived in Babylon. Cant recall his name atm.

With his face destroyed by the arsenics reaction to frosbite his eye patch, his rampant megalomania and incredible ego, his penchant for human experimentation and calculated genocides he does come across as a super villain.
 
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